


Coming Awake

by simplecoffee



Series: Aurora 'verse [2]
Category: Oblivion (2013)
Genre: F/M, Finger Sucking, Hand & Finger Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Original Jack & Vika Characters, Permanent Injury, Vaginal Fingering, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:55:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplecoffee/pseuds/simplecoffee
Summary: "Jack, the rules," she says, but something in her wants to take to the air, do a barrel roll, right there and then. She doesn't let it win, but she worries that one day she might.
Relationships: Jack Harper/Victoria "Vika" Olsen
Series: Aurora 'verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964911
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	Coming Awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThisPolarNoise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisPolarNoise/gifts).



Vika stumbles on the landing pad. On the other side of the bubble ship, she sees Jack do the same. He checks all the flight systems one by one, blinking exhaustedly, looking as ragged as she feels, until he's finally convinced himself the autopilot really did shut everything down.

She leans her head against the cool, curved glass, watches him clumsily shut the door and steady himself before walking round to her, something about the shy smile he gives her sweetly familiar - she knows him, she thinks. She knows him, even though she's never seen him before.

Jack is her partner, according to the briefing that played for them on the flight down. He's her partner in more ways than one; it's why they were chosen for this mission - the hope they'd be a more effective team because of it. Perhaps it was even why they volunteered together. She supposes that now, they'll never know.

Jack blinks tiredly at her, still smiling, and offers her his hand.

"Do we know each other?" he says, voice slightly raw, all quiet charm, and Vika grins and locks her fingers with his, and pulls him forward into Tower 19.

They stagger indoors as the sun sets, manage to find some clothes to sleep in. Vika falls into bed in the first nightgown she pulls off a hanger, while Jack goes in search of something warmer than just the standard-issue pyjama trousers from the closet; he returns in a sweatshirt, with a pile of blankets that he proceeds to unfold and layer over her and the bed, one by one. She wriggles half of them off, but takes his hand again when he finally gets into bed beside her.

She wakes the next morning with her chin resting on Jack's shoulder, and Jack squinting up in bleary confusion at the alarm clock going off beside them. She grins a little at the expression on his face, and reaches over him to switch it off. There's a tiny photograph of the two of them right next to it, in a little silver frame. It was nice of Mission to think of them; they'll be here five years, after all. It's going to take a while to make this feel like home.

According to the briefing, they have a day to settle in. She bundles Jack into the shower with the promise of hot coffee, then leaves him at the table and takes one herself, ending up too tired to even dry her hair. He clinks his mug against hers in solidarity, then sighs and wraps his hands around it again.

"Getting your memory wiped really takes it outta you, huh," he says.

"Shit," she mumbles in agreement. "Who knew, right?"

"You need some help with your hair?"

"Oh, would you? Please? Wait, god, no, finish your coffee first."

"I'm done, I'm done." He's not, but he gulps the rest of it down in a hurry, then rounds the table to her. He's gentle when he reaches for the towel around her neck, uses it to carefully blot the dripping water from her hair, and she almost doesn't know what makes her rise up on her toes, lean forward and press a soft kiss to his cheek.

She almost doesn't know, and yet it seems inevitable. Just like the fact that he turns to follow her mouth as she retreats, leans down and hesitantly kisses her, his eyes half closed already as she tilts her head and locks her lips to his. It's a kiss that deepens slowly, dazedly, feeling like they're standing there for hours, tasting like strong coffee. It's slightly burnt. She hasn't yet got used to the machine at the tower.

She could get used to her technician, though. Or, well - get used to him again. She hopes she never does, hopes it's always like this, always new and blissful and oddly trusting. Hopes it was always like this in their previous life, before they got here from the Tet.

They check in with Sally at mission control, then explore the tower together, hand in hand. They barely make it to the engineering levels before they're both too tired to go on. Jack obliges her good-natured whining by picking her up in his arms and carrying her back upstairs to bed, and she tries to pretend to hate it but doesn't quite succeed, falls asleep tucked under his chin as he lightly strokes her hair, promising they'll be better able to face the world tomorrow.

-

They learn to face the world together, if not quite side by side. What's left of the world, anyway. Jack tells her what he sees.

It's unfamiliar, all of it. His descriptions of the ruined earth, the half-buried signs of what humanity used to be, of flying and trekking for miles to find downed drones, some of which try to fight him before he can repair them, like they're scared. After the first few days, he talks about the drones like they're alive, talks about the planet like it's alive, and Vika finds herself torn between revulsion and fascination, half wanting to see it for herself, half wanting nothing more than to hide away forever. It's a push and pull she suspects she'd grown accustomed to, in whatever life she lived before. This time, she watches Jack's fascination with everything around him, and decides not to be afraid.

They're both quiet people by nature, she thinks, while discovering both him and herself again. They could spend hours just sitting together in the same room, Jack working on drone parts while she tracks the whereabouts of each new distress call before turning in for the night. Sometimes he'll pull her feet into his lap when he comes home at the end of the day; he always hugs her when he has to leave her alone at the console. She feels a little silly for enjoying it so much, but he never seems to think twice about it, and she returns his beaming smile every time. Sometimes they'll go for a swim together and curl up beside the pool afterwards, his fingers idly stroking her side, warmth flooding into her from the gentle friction of his thumb on her hipbone, and she'll lean up to kiss his jaw, make his breath stutter, and then ride him slowly while the lights fade to nighttime blue.

They're quiet people by nature. At the tower, they hardly need to say much at all. Sometimes Jack tells her he loves her, softly, when she's almost asleep, loosely nestled as the little spoon in his arms. Sometimes she answers with laughing complaints about him stealing all the blankets, but sometimes she finds herself whispering it back. Sometimes, in the dead of night, it matters to her that he knows.

Often, the days are _loud_. At first it's the unpredictability of it, the newness of listening to Jack flying solo and fighting and fixing and exploring, while she's desk-bound to do her job. Then, it becomes the Scav attacks - surprisingly frequent, nail-biting until they get used to their tactics, until she gets used to patching Jack up when he gets hurt in a skirmish. Sometimes it's just the deafening silence as Jack explores a ruined building or finds a new sheltered patch of land somewhere, his awestruck breathing filtering down the line.

"We could grow potatoes here," he whispers one day at lunchtime, and Vika laughs at how out of left field it is, then immediately apologizes for laughing. "No, no, I get it, I just - I just think about plants a lot. About how everyone used to live on the surface."

"Yeah?" she says, encouraging, munching on her energy bar, and Jack falls silent for a moment or two. "Come on, tell me what you think about. I won't bite. Well, only if you like it."

Jack doesn't laugh, which tells her to wait him out.

"What do you remember, Vika?" he finally says. "About our life before? About things Sally hasn't mentioned?"

Vika takes a moment to breathe. "I - I don't. I don't, Jack."

"The last Superbowl? That's all you think about when you think about life on Earth?" He sounds careful, like he's heard her hesitation. Like he might have the same strange dreams she has sometimes, the same fleeting hints of memory that drift past her too rapidly to catch. "Vika, I - I think you should maybe come down here sometime. See what it's like. Maybe at night, so no one has to know."

"Jack, the rules," she says, but something in her wants to take to the air, do a barrel roll, right there and then. She doesn't let it win, but she worries that one day she might. "You know we're not allowed."

"Yeah, okay," Jack says, and then takes a shaky breath. "I hear music, sometimes, in my dreams. I think I remember how to grow strawberries. I think I remember what it's like to walk barefoot in the grass. It feels familiar. I don't know if any of it's true."

She's never hated it before, when he's been far away. Never wanted to reach out and hold him through the comms before. But then again, she's never felt her heart race quite like this before, never felt so real it hurts. She's never wanted so much to give in.

"We'll know in 2080, love," she says. "When we get to Titan, I guess we'll know. For now, how about you come back home?"

-

"I've missed you," she whispers when he lands, her arms around his neck as he lifts her up, supporting her by her thigh and waist.

"I've been in your ear all day, talking nonsense."

"I like it when you're here talking nonsense," she says, and kisses him. He relaxes into it, carrying her forward until he can brace her on the counter, and cups her face gently with his hands when they break.

"I'm sorry about today," he says, his eyes serious. "I didn't mean to freak you out, or try to get you to break the rules. If you'd like to forget that ever happened, I'm game."

She grins and kisses his nose, and he laughs. She's tempted to agree, to close that door forever, to brush today under the carpet and let him keep that smile. Instead, she chooses truth, chooses not to be afraid.

"No," she says. "I thought you made sense. If you remember anything else, I'd like to know. Shit, even if you think about anything else I'd like to know. Tell me how to grow strawberries, Harper, I'll listen."

This smile's a better one than she's ever seen. Quiet, half incredulous, all irresistible, and yet she keeps her hands and her mouth to herself until he whispers, "Thank you." And then - "You wanna hear about this CD player I found?"

"Oh my _god_ , what have you been getting up to while I'm stuck up here, tell me everything - wait, don't stop doing that, you can tell me everything later, too."

-

Jack rambles in her ear often from then on, about everything from circuitry to kitchen gardens to the history of electronic trance. She prompts him for more, listens with all she's got, but has very little to talk about in return. The dreams still don't get any less vague, still leave her grasping for detail, and there isn't much by way of entertainment at the tower, just sports equipment and stationery supplies. Apparently some communications officers, or some technicians, like keeping paper lists. She supposes trees aren't exactly in short supply these days.

She brings a sheaf of paper and a pencil up to the console, dares to doodle during work hours, out of Sally's sight. Jack sends her a drone readout, a blurry greyscale image of himself in a lush valley near the outskirts of Zone 19, and she tries to replicate it, figures pretty soon she can't. She's going to have to start from scratch, make learning to draw a project all her own.

She waits for Jack to go off-comm for the afternoon, and then debates her angles of approach. Eventually, she finds herself kneeling in front of a mirror in the engineering bay, peeling her regulation grey dress off over her shoulders, and drawing herself. Again and again, the curves and lines of her, day after day, until she knows herself better than she ever did, until she feels like she halfway knows what she's doing when she puts pencil to paper.

She thinks about drawing Jack, in the mornings when she wakes before him, in the evenings when she sits on the stairs and sneakily watches him work on drone 109, when he sits at the edge of the pool after they swim together and she watches him openly, water dripping down his face into the regulation grey bathrobe that's probably the softest item of clothing each of them owns. She sketches sundry household things instead, their coffee mugs, the clouds outside the tower, finally shows her drawings to him and blushes with delight when he falls over himself in praise.

"Can I put these on the fridge?" he says. "Don't laugh, people used to put things on fridges with magnets, 109 would not miss a few magnets. Shit, I could make you a frame."

"You are not framing a picture of our coffee mugs, Jack."

"Are you kidding? It's the cutest thing."

" _You're_ the cutest thing - no, you can't say it back now." He pretends to sulk, and she kisses his cheek and steals the drawing from his hand. "I'll make something worth framing someday, okay? This just isn't it. I'm still glad you like it, though."

"I love it. I love you. I love that you - you've been learning to draw for what, how long? And I didn't have a clue."

"It's a big tower, Jack, you never know what else I'm hiding in here."

He squints. "You been drawing me when I'm not looking?"

"Not yet," she confesses. "I've thought about it. But no, just me. And hey, none of that's anything you haven't seen before."

-

He offers, only half jokingly, to be her muse. She promises she'll take him up on it, not telling him she's already sketched a silhouette or two of him since she first showed him her work. She talks to him now, while he's exploring, about techniques she's discovered and mediums she wishes she could try, and wouldn't it be great if she figured out tattoo inks someday? And then, out of the blue, he shows up early one evening with a shifty expression on his face, and when coaxed to stop hedging and spit it out, Harper, he unzips his jacket and pulls out a book.

It's ancient, laminated pages yellowing, but it's in remarkably good shape, and he's clearly cleaned it with some attention before bringing it back to her. And it's a book about drawing. There are tools and tips she's never dreamed of, dizzying arrays of examples she could use, and she's speechless for a minute, leafing carefully through it as Jack stares at her with hopeful kitten eyes.

"I know it's against the rules," he says, and she grabs him and tackles him against the wall in a hug. "Okay, I guess you're not mad."

"You're ridiculous," she says. "I love you so much."

-

The book doesn't make them ill, or contaminate the tower. Vika keeps it safely out of Sally's way, consulting it on her lunch breaks and before the Tet comes online in the mornings. Jack slowly starts to bring back more curiosities he's found - first the CD player and an impressive stack of discs, only some of which work, then a guitar he promises he'll figure out how to play someday, and then...clothes.

Vika hadn't realized how much she missed any colour but grey in her life, until Jack shows up with a pair of black denim jeans he figures will fit her, and a t-shirt for a band she's never heard of but immediately adores. He shows her the clothes he found for himself a while ago, too: the softest plaid shirt, in the richest shade of purple she's ever seen, that with the dark blue jeans he picked out makes him look inexplicably so much more like _himself_ that it leaves her breathless. Their new outfits - quickly, their new wardrobes - feel different, the textures so much more varied than the grey, if well-cut, standard-issue clothes they wear, and Vika feels the same rush from them that she gets from putting pencil to paper, that she gets from listening to Jack's favourite CD from the early 2000s that skips a synthesizer beat at one specific point in one specific song and feels real, so real, fills the tower with sound and sensation until it feels right that they're alone together in such a vast empty space, that they're meant to be here wrapped in each other, that her mouth on Jack's lips and her thighs round his hips are the only truths that matter.

She throws herself into everything, into living as much as she and Jack can, experiencing everything they can, and they've got so many interests now that she sometimes forgets to warm her wrists and shoulders up before drawing all day, and ends up aching miserably by sundown.

Jack lets her complain, holds her close, rubs the tension out of her fingers and wrists before starting work on her shoulders. She ends up lying on top of him, occasionally telling him where to let up or knead harder, until she's a grateful mess, content and calm, not far from falling asleep but terrible at resisting temptation. Even worse at resisting her partner, lately, though she's never been good at that.

Vika takes a leaf out of Jack's own book, reaches down to gently stroke his hip. It's an awkward angle, but she manages it, feeling him respond almost instantly as she drags a clumsy hand down his thigh.

"Hey," he whispers, breathing faster, warmer, against her temple, and then reaches up, tucks his fingertips lightly into the waistband of her jeans, grazing her hipbone. "You sure about that? You look exhausted."

"I'm sure," she breathes, and he kisses her temple and unbuttons her jeans, fingers controlled but eager, exploring her, almost making her gasp, but not quite yet. "Get me out of these clothes and get me off, Harper."

"I've got you," he says in answer. She doesn't need much help with her clothes - just a little to get her t-shirt over her head, the muscles of her back still aching. Jack pulls the sheets up over them both, the satin cool against her heated skin, and she leans back into the warmth of him, the rough denim of his jeans, the soft plaid of his shirt, resting her head on the pillow beside his cheek. He uses a hand to steady her, splayed reassuringly against her stomach, while the other slips inside her, finds a rhythm she likes and brings her close. He kisses her temple as she comes, his bracing hand drifting up to ghost his fingertips over her right breast, again and again, driving her further upward till she's finally spent.

She manages to roll off him, double back and tuck her arms close around him before falling asleep. When they wake up in the morning, she returns the favour, jerking him off nice and slow, then kissing him senseless all the way to the shower.

-

They're drinking coffee together just before daybreak, Jack curled up in Vika's arms, taking his turn being the little spoon, when they see the explosion in the distance.

Jack knows there's something terribly wrong the moment he sees the blinding light. It takes Vika a moment or two to come to the same conclusion. Jack stands frozen at the window as the sun rises, the console lighting up at Vika's command but the Tet remaining stubbornly offline.

"Can you track the drones?" Jack says when he pulls himself together.

"Come here," Vika says distractedly, checking her systems one by one, needing him nearby while she does. "Come here. They're all dead in the water, I can't find them, not a one. I've only got a read on you, Jack - look, on the screen - it's just you. Come here. Take my hand."

He does. He squeezes it tight, sits patiently by her while she tries everything she can to confirm or deny the truth. Promises he'll go and check on 109 downstairs, but doesn't leave her when they see the first piece of debris descend.

"Guess it's just us now, huh," he says quietly, and Vika realizes she's been staring at a blank screen for the past who knows how long, when the only person she has in the world is right beside her.

"Yeah," she says, turning to face him, deeply glad to see the look of determination in his eyes. "No one I'd rather do this alone with than you."

-

They sketch out a game plan. There have to be other technicians somewhere, if they can circumvent the radiation zones somehow. Failing that, there have to be places in Zone 19 that they could possibly live in. Vika's about done living in the tower, about ready to walk barefoot in the grass for the first time.

Jack goes out almost every day, almost just like usual. This time he searches for drones and takes their shielding apart and brings it home, trying to build a durable radiation shield for the bubble ship. Vika rewires the console to try and track faint or residual signals, helping him as best she can, and when the shock wears off enough she even starts to draw again, this time with Jack as her willing muse, plaid shirts and all.

On April the 22nd, in the middle of a dark afternoon, she loses contact with him.

He's flown through storms before without any trouble, only this time he doesn't get home at sunset, and his signal doesn't reemerge when the clouds clear. She tries her best to relocate the bubble ship, finds nothing but dead air, even well into the next morning. She remembers the look on his face when the Tet fell, remembers the moment they knew, and she knows again, deep in her soul, that something terrible has happened.

She's almost shaking when she finally turns to tracking his biosignature again, boosting the range further than she's ever set it to run. She leaves the console on to run the search every day, trying to formulate a game plan, to do this on her own. And then, one day, she hears an alert, runs to the console, and stares in shock.

There he is. Or rather, six of him. Six copies of him, close to each other, located in a close enough direction to where he was headed last. She reboots the console, then leaves it on, double and triple checks her calculations, for almost two more days, before making her decision.

She leaves Jack a note, in case he gets home while she's gone. Leaves him a radio transmitter, keeps the receiver charged and in her pocket. And she packs a bag with all their best-loved belongings she can carry, finds the little backup bubble ship meant for emergency drone repairs, and sets off to find her boy.

-

None of them are her boy.

They're all Jack Harper, all six of them. They all have his face, and they all have different numbers on their uniform jackets. They all look resigned and not unsympathetic as she stares at each of them in turn, head reeling, and as they all seem to consider who should speak first, a functioning drone bobs up in the distance, scanning her, and she flinches back. The furthest Jack from her, the one in a suit jacket, whistles and gestures to it to stay where it is, and it seems to obey him, sinking back down.

And then a woman peers out of the tent behind them, and Vika locks eyes with herself.

"Holy fuck," she says out loud.

-

Jack 49 and Jack 21 sit her down, make her some coffee, and tell her the whole story. It's immediately clear the two of them are inseparable, even before 49 explains just what the Tet was and _who they all are_ , even before 21 explains that 49 was the one who brought it down, crashing into Zone 21 gravely injured, surprised to wake up alive when he and Vika 21 took him in. 49 and both the 21s have been out looking for other technicians and comms officers for a while; they picked up 13, 18, 68 and 71 on the way.

"That suits me fine," Vika says. "I'm looking for my Jack - Tech 19. He went down in a storm in April, I lost contact, and when I ran my search for him today I found - well, all of you."

"I'm sorry," Jack 21 says, an honest sympathy in his eyes that looks almost haunted, nothing like her Jack even though he shares his face. "Welcome aboard, Vika."

Jack 13, in the light green plaid - Jack With The Black Cat, as he cheerfully announces he's known - shows her around their campsite, and tells her about the others. Jack 18 is Jack With The Drone, who's even more of an engineering whiz than the rest of them; Jack 68 in the bright orange Yankees cap is Scifi Jack, who has a toad called Phil; Jack 71 is Knitwear Jack, who spent two long winters in Alaska and still has lingering pain in his fingers from it, but knits when he can anyway. As for 21 and 49, they're the boss and the captain respectively, though no one ever says that to their faces. They're addressed as 21 and 49.

"Cap over there can't walk so great," 13 says, hauling his cat off the ground and handing her to Vika, who does not know how to handle cats. "Hey, no, it's okay, hold her like this. There, she's purring now, see? Her name's Morrison. Anyway, 49 uses a cane - check it out, 21 built it for him. He broke his leg in the crash down from the Tet after blowing it up. Got a hell of a concussion, too, so he still gets dizzy sometimes. We all keep trying to get him to rest up, but we're all stubborn idiots, so good luck with that."

Vika finds herself grinning, despite everything. "I'm hoping my stubborn idiot's still alive somewhere, 13."

"I hope so too," 13 says, and gently squeezes her arm. "You hold Morrison as long as you need to, okay?"

-

She travels with the group, gets to know the others, both through actually talking to them and through 13 rambling on comfortingly beside her. Jack 18's drone is called Fluffy, and she knows how to play fetch, which is slightly more than Morrison can grasp - or perhaps just less dignified than Morrison prefers. Jack 68 is delightfully eccentric, and gives her an origami rose he made and asks her if she believes in robots in the space of two minutes. Jack 71 is shy, and so is Vika 21, but Vika 21 does immediately offer to alter her clothes if she ever needs it. Vika offers to draw her in return.

49 and the 21s are the oldest clones in the crowd, having nearly completed their five-year missions before they learned Titan was a lie all along. Jack 13 is just about her and her Jack's age, at just over two. She expects it to sink in excruciatingly slowly that this is all real, but instead she believes it all instantly, helped by the fact that somehow none of these men who share Jack's face, Jack's everything, _look like Jack_. Some of them have the same hairdo, but they all carry themselves differently, and while she still sometimes can't tell them apart, she'd know him from them any day.

It's oddly easy to accept that Vika 21 isn't her, too.

"Hey, 13," she says one evening, nudging him in the arm. "Where'd your Vika go? There's a lot of Jacks here, and a lot fewer of...me. Us. You know. Did something happen to Vika 13?"

13 looks uncomfortable, takes a while to answer.

"Not all of us were as happy as you were," he finally says. "You know Jack 21 isn't with Vika 21 any more - they're still friends, though - not all of us could manage that, either."

"Tell me," Vika says.

"I found Morrison as a kitten, and I couldn't take her back to the tower. I'd tried before, asking Vika if I could bring her flowers - when I did, she threw them off the side of the tower. Rules and everything, you know. And I couldn't leave Morrison alone - I know she's huge now, but she was tiny, she'd have died without me. I made the choice to stay away." Vika must look horrified, because 13 plops Morrison onto her lap again - she's starting to appreciate this is his comfort gesture, like her Jack pulling her feet into his lap. "Don't worry, I'm sure she's fine. She could get away if she wanted to, as well - reserve ship, like you did. I just - fuck, I shouldn't be talking like this to you about someone who's... _you_. Although I don't think you'd like her very much."

"She doesn't sound like someone who'd be my friend," Vika says, thinks about the day she first considered breaking the rules, and then the day she finally did, and aches for her own Jack with a fierceness that she can't swallow down, not today.

"Hey," 13 says, awkwardly patting her back in a way that shouldn't help but does. "Hey, we'll find him. You just gotta hold on."

-

She keeps holding on. She keeps her radio receiver charged, hoping against hope every single day. She fills sketchbooks with the new and exciting things she sees on the surface of the planet, fills them with little pictures of the other members of the group, fills them with sketch after sketch of Jack 19 as she remembers him, first to remind herself of what he looks like - with each of the crew so subtly different from the rest - and then just to look at his face and hold him close to her heart and dream.

They travel for months, picking up a few other Jacks and one other Vika along the way, slowly becoming more and more like a family. Jack 64, who's immediately Jack With The Golden Retriever, and Freddie the dog who's delighted to meet them all. Jack 24, who lost his hearing in an accident when the Tet fell, and wears a beanie and a bright yellow shirt. Jack 36, who uses a wheelchair, and Vika 36 who wears the technician's uniform in his place - both of whom know a whole lot about books. They're not together any more, either.

Vika chops her hair into a messy bob, and enlists the other two Vikas to help her find enough henna to dye it as black as it will go. They find the ruins of old clothing stores, sometimes, and all of them sort through what they want to keep, Vika keeping black trousers and velour shirts she can rip artistically, while Vika 21 gets excited about fabric swatches, and all the Jacks gravitate towards different shades of plaid. It takes her a while to realize she knows and loves these people, that she wants her boy to be a part of this family too.

-

When 49 and 21 finally get together, they also decide they need to stop moving.

It's nearly winter by then, a chill in the air. Vika's devastated, much as she knows it's sensible, watching 36 and 49 starting to ache more in the cold, watching 18 and 68 rig up heating gloves for 71's hands. 13 tells her they'll resume the search for Jack once it's warmer, that he's probably keeping warm somewhere himself and will find his way back to her in the spring, but it rings hollow to her, only feeds the growing dread in her heart that they're all too kind to talk about: that after so long, there's a real possibility that he might be dead.

She tries to go on, anyway. She moves into a section of the farmhouse they all settle in, neighbours with 13 on one side and 64 on the other; paints a portrait of 18 and Fluffy and presents it to them, one of the first watercolours she's ever done after finding a set in an old shopping mall. She accompanies 21 to the nearby Scav village, and finds someone who can help her learn the intricacies of tattoo art. Jack 13 picks up 19's guitar and teaches himself a couple of chords, and she finds herself laughing sometimes that winter, despite the dark and cold.

-

It's April, again, and she's thinking of heading to the village to trade for more tattoo ink when 13 knocks urgently on her door, and the look on his face makes her drop everything and go with him.

"You might wanna see this," he says gently, and well - yeah. Yeah, she wants to see this. 13 points out the first new guy they've had at the settlement since they moved in, and her first thought is that she was right - she would know him anywhere. Even among so many other Jacks, even this small and exhausted and haggard and squinting in the afternoon sunlight while politely saying something indistinct to 49, Vika would know him anywhere.

She still glances at his uniform jacket to confirm it. Her eyes well up when she sees the number _19_ , and she rubs at them with her sleeve, her voice a croak when she calls out his name.

It takes him a moment to recognize her. His eyes light up when he does. She almost leaps into his arms by reflex, expecting him to pick her up, brace her against him like he's just stepped off the landing pad and everything's just like it used to be. Something stops her at the last minute, and she just puts her arms around him instead. He holds her close in return, his left arm pulling her in tight, his right tucked around the small of her back but held loosely at an awkward angle.

"Sorry," he whispers as she kisses his jaw, tears spilling down both their cheeks, and she feels the hitch in his breath that confirms her suspicions, tells her he's in pain and trying to hide it. "I'm so glad you're here. I've missed you so much."

"Don't be sorry," she says, trying to wipe his eyes with her sleeve and probably making it worse. "I love you. Welcome home."

-

He explains where he's been, haltingly, to her and 49 and 21. Tells them how he got shot down in the storm, hurt his shoulder in the crash, then fell into the hands of Scavs from across the radiation zone who thought he might know something about why the Tet fell. Tells them he escaped from them, skips over the details, lightly touches on having spent a few months in a damp cave coughing his lungs out, on how his shoulder somehow never managed to heal. He stayed at another Scav village for a while, helping them rebuild after drone shrapnel struck, and eventually heard about the settlement and decided to make his way to them.

"I didn't know you'd be here," he says, still clutching her hand. "I hoped someone here could point me to you, reorient me back to the tower. I just - I never gave up, but I know it's been long enough that you might have."

"I never did," she tells him, and stays by his side until he eventually falls asleep at the picnic table, 49 and 21 still talking between themselves. She can see the pain etched into his face as he sleeps, see how worn the past year has left him, and all she can do is rest a hand in his hair and stumble over a thousand thanks in her head that he's alive.

21 gently scoops him up and carries him back to her place, careful not to jostle his injured arm. Vika piles all the blankets onto him that she can find, and watches him sleep until she feels herself slipping under.

"This isn't going to be easy," 21 says softly before he leaves, and Vika turns and croaks a thank you, half mortified she forgot he was there. "You'll be okay, though. Take it from me."

-

Jack wakes with tears of pain glittering in his eyes, barely knowing where he is until he can see her and touch her, hear the words she's saying, convince himself she's real.

Vika runs some cool water over an old t-shirt, wrings it out, and gently blots it over his face. He settles gradually, sinking down into the soft pillows 36 sent over, his breathing slowly becoming less ragged although his jaw is still clenched in pain.

"Hey, love," she whispers, softly resting the cloth over his eyes, then his forehead. "Would you mind if I took a look at your shoulder?"

He looks plainly miserable about it, but agrees anyway. She's gentle when she unbuttons his shirt, lets him close his eyes as she moves the lapels of the layers he's wearing aside, ghosts her fingers along the jagged scars. His shoulder's not misaligned, exactly, but it is too warm, too knotted. She swallows at the thought that he's been hurt like this for a year, that he's spent so long alone or worse than alone, that after all of that he somehow still trusts her this much.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he huffs quietly, his face turned away from her hand, eyes screwed shut in an achingly determined attempt to cope.

"It happens," he says, his voice barely a breath, almost a sob. "I love you."

"God, I love you _so much_ , Jack." Saying it to him is like a dam breaking, a spillway clearing in her chest, suddenly makes it a little more real that he's here with her, that she isn't holding out a vain hope any longer. Makes it easier to feel her heart clench and bend down and kiss his temple when he chokes back a sob for real.

"You'd have been within your rights to give up on me," he says, blinking his eyes open, meeting hers for a fraction of a second. "Shit, you still would be. Look at all these guys who look just like me."

Vika looks at him, his hair unevenly chopped just a little longer than she saw it last, his eyes the same blue as everyone else's and still somehow the exact unique shade she remembers, and wonders how to tell him none of the other Jacks are as beautiful as he is.

"I wanna show you something," she says instead. "After we get you showered and more comfortable, okay?" And then, "Who told you? About - about who we are. What we are."

"We're still people," Jack says immediately, like he's thought about it, and only then answers the question. "The Scavs talked about it. They...didn't care much what they said around me. It's okay; I figured it out."

She kisses him in lieu of trying to say anything at all. It's slow going, but she manages to get him showered and dressed, his eyes fixed in delight on the vines she's tattooed up both her arms, and then gets him settled down and fetches the sketchbooks she filled with drawings of him.

He looks up at her halfway through, his eyes filled with tears again. 

"Don't talk," she says. "Just look at them all. It's been a year, there's a lot, Jack."

"Hey, okay," he mumbles. "I'm a good boy, I do what I'm told."

"Damn right you do," she whispers, and settles down beside him, letting him lean into her shoulder and drift asleep again.

-

Everyone at the settlement pitches in to help them. Vika 21 brings them more food than they can possibly eat, and makes Jack a soft, sturdy sling that won't hurt him as much as the makeshift ones he's been using, when he's used one at all. Vika 36 provides painkillers, and tells them how often to use them. Jack 13 brings over the softest pillows and blankets from 36, flowers from 49, records from 21, and generally hovers around them looking like he's on the verge of tears. She can tell Jack's overwhelmed, when he's conscious enough to be. He tries his best to get to know everyone, paying wide-eyed attention when he feels well enough, but more days than not he gasps awake in tears, barely knowing where he is, and all she can do is stay by his side, reorient him and get him to rest. He runs warm, these days, barely able to sleep without an ice pack at his shoulder, but he still manages to hoard all the blankets if she's so much as an inch away from him all night.

Vika can't keep her hands off him. Can't keep from constantly stroking his hair, constantly kissing his forehead and cheeks, smoothing her hands over his back and shoulders, learning him again - this time, really, _again_. Jack drinks in all of it, parched even in his sleep, burying his face in her shoulder and weakly curling his fingers in hers.

13 brings over a folded stack of the softest clothes everyone could find. Vika thanks him, hugs him close, and sends him on his way. She finally finds it in herself that morning to reach into the back of her closet for the little bundle of clothes she hasn't dared look at for months, the one she couldn't bear to leave behind when she left the tower.

She finds Jack's favourite oversized hoodie, helps him on with it, careful with his shoulder, while they wait for the next painkiller to kick in. Jack thanks her softly and leans up to kiss her, fever-warm from the heat of his injury, lips locked against hers with fierce desire, quietly burning. He stays there almost perfectly still, kisses her slowly through deep, steadying breaths until she finally reaches out to help him, cup his face, tilt it up, and ever so lightly graze his lip with her teeth, breaking his concentration, making his breath stutter.

It takes them forever to break the kiss. She's aching all over by the time he finally drops his head, exhausted from craning upward, eyes pinched in pain. She ducks down and reaches for him, finds a pressure point on his good shoulder and gently squeezes, and his jaw eases in sudden relief; she hasn't quite forgotten the lines of him, hasn't quite forgotten the tricks he taught her by using them on her back at the tower. He tucks his good arm round her, tight, almost painful, and presses his forehead to her collarbone.

"Please don't go anywhere today," he whispers. "Just for today? I know - I know you can't just stay all the time, but sometimes I wake up and I can't find you and - and it's the worst."

"I know," she says, kissing the top of his head. "I'm right here, love, I know."

-

21 is right; it isn't easy. He's also right in that it gets better. She and Vika 36 find a cocktail of injectors that might help Jack heal; he's never going to regain mobility in the shoulder, but at least they can ease the pain. 13 stays with him for her when she needs to go out for a while, and he gets a little better at dealing with being alone again; Morrison helps, sometimes by literally sitting on top of him. 49 and 21 still swap out records and flowers every week, and Vika digs out the old CD player, lets 13 bring in the guitar, and they fill the little house with as much music as Jack can take before it gets overwhelming.

Jack asks about the tattoos on her arms. Like the conversation about her artwork, this one ends with her promising to make him her canvas when he's well. She also promises him she'll dye the tips of his hair purple, which she's less confident about, but it absolutely delights him, so she doesn't burst his bubble. Knowing him, it'll probably turn out great anyway.

-

The first day Vika believes it, the first day it feels real, is the day Jack feels well enough to wear his purple plaid shirt. Vika's in a hoodie and jeans, both of them barefoot, and she fully intends to drag him outside and spend some time walking in the grass together.

Jack, evidently, has other plans. He returns the hug she gives him with a pointed, heavy kiss; responds to her running her fingers down his cheek by capturing them in his mouth, then letting them go. 

"Are you sure," she whispers, and he nods, gently bringing her closer with his good hand at the small of her back. She finds the nearest chair and drags it closer to his so he can stay comfortable, sits on her calves in front of him, and gently pulls him forward, finds his lips with her thumb.

She sets the speed, lets him accept her, working her fingers in his mouth in a gradual, curling rhythm, the movement resonating through her a second time over as he leans into her pace, his head tucked close against her chest, softly working against the fabric of her hoodie. She's careful, fumbling her rhythm every time she has the sharp recollection that she needs to be aware of his right shoulder and remember not to hurt him, but every time he adjusts for her, licks or bites her fingers gently till she calms, and lets her pick up the pace again, caressing the roof of his mouth with her fingertips.

He's warm, obliging. Still knows how to drive her wild, when to suck on her fingers and when to break the rhythm and pause to breathe, sending a shock of momentary coolness through her. His right hand is at her hip, fingertips stroking her skin lightly underneath her hoodie, almost unconsciously, almost as though it's muscle memory, his body speaking to hers as hers remembers his. She's swaying into him gently by now, over and over, his left hand finding her thigh and pressing into the muscle, releasing her and pressing in again, drawn to points of tension like he always is.

She thrusts her fingers into his mouth again, and the tension snaps.

He sucks her through the aftershocks. Sweeps his fingers upward from her thigh, finds the crease between it and her buttock and strokes her there through her jeans before trailing upward to the bare skin above her waistband, further up the gentle curve of her spine, lightly scratching her with his nails as sparks fly behind her eyes. She almost - almost - reaches out to grab his shoulder with her left hand; grabs his wrist instead, tight, and finds him grinning up at her, breathing hard, when she finally opens her eyes and looks back down.

"Sorry," she says, grinning quietly back.

"What the fuck for?" he whispers, this close to laughing, and she sinks down and cups his face and kisses him instead of explaining, catching him breathless in her mouth.

"Come here," she says. "Are you okay? Come here, I've got you."

"I'm okay. I'm okay, come closer." His head is still tilted up towards her, eager, and his hands find her waist again, thumbs brushing up underneath her hoodie, and just like that she's warm and wet again, leaning down and pressing her forehead to his and noticing, an instinct now from the past few weeks of having him back, that he's starting to hurt, should probably be lying down before it gets bad. 

"Couch," she says, instead of trying to convince him of anything, and he lets her lead him there, the living room dark and cool, the cushions soft, and she knows him, she thinks, even if she hasn't seen him for a year, even in the dark, she knows his touch like she knows almost nothing else, on the planet or otherwise.

Jack unbuttons her jeans this time, presses into her stomach with the flat of his hand, grazes her skin with his fingertips. He's clearly exhausted, slower now; they're both slower, gentler, and when she reaches out to stroke her hand through his hair, he leans up underneath her hoodie and sucks on the side of her breast, using his teeth just enough. She feels him laser-focused through the haze, his whole attention on just that one part of her, and he breathes warmth and bites down and she feels herself flood with heat again.

She finds her hands starting to clench in his hair, and ruffles it gently instead before reaching down for him awkwardly with her left hand, her right pinned between his head and the couch. She barely has to touch him through the fabric of his jeans before he's coming too, head buried in her chest, breath almost a sob, settling down into moments of silence before he turns a fraction of an inch and kisses her other breast.

Vika comes back to herself curled around him, cradling his head with a hand between his temple and the couch cushions, her fingers buried deep in his hair; her other hand is underneath his shirt, braced against his back, pressed just below the heat of his injured shoulder. She strokes his skin, damp as his hair in her other hand, and he shivers, still not quite there, not quite conscious enough to move.

She bends to kiss his head, gently, without jostling him. Moves her hand from his back, smoothes his shirt back down into place without having to think about it, and he tries to raise his right arm and gasps with pain as his shoulder freezes.

"Hush, Jack, don't," she whispers, her voice still a husk of itself, but he hears, giving her a small nod with his forehead still burrowed against her chest, the fingertips of his left hand pressing almost painfully into her stomach and ribs before he manages to take a deep enough breath to free himself from some of the pain. She brushes his shoulder, strokes so light she knows by now they don't hurt, kisses his hair again as his right hand slowly manages to find her hip and hold weakly on for a moment or two. She rocks him a little, like he's done for her sometimes before, gently frees her right hand from underneath his head, and as he curls further into the soft cushion and herself, she decides to let him sleep. She'll worry about cleanup in a while, coax him into a warm shower even if he wakes up feeling awful, let him wash her hair if he doesn't. Get back to bed with a whole pile of blankets, plus extra for when he hoards them all in his sleep. For now, she rests her chin on his head and her hand on his waist, tucks her thumb into his belt loop to make sure she doesn't accidentally hurt his shoulder later, and lets herself drift away.


End file.
